From the Orlando Sentinel, by Leslie Postal
Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson — who is in Central Florida this week giving speeches and making visits — stopped by the Orlando Sentinel’s editorial board, too.
Below are some of his key points on current, and controversial, education issues.
Global education: Robinson said economic development and education go hand in hand, as businesses depend on a “talent pipeline” to thrive. He said he used The Global Report Card to tell Seminole leaders yesterday that while the district is among the top school systems in Florida, it needs to focus on how its students can compete nationally and internationally.
“It’s really Seminole and Singapore. Seminole and Switzerland,” he said.
The report showed, for example, that Seminole students in math did well in the state and the nation and even against a large group of developed countries. But it didn’t stack up well against Singapore, Switzerland or Finland — countries that lead the international pack when it comes to high test scores.
Virtual education: Robinson said “I just support virtual education across the board,” calling it another way to provide lessons “across space and time.” He said he’d favor an online university and the expansion of online, or virtual, classes for K-12, especially in subjects where it’s hard to find enough teachers.
“There simply aren’t enough human beings, trained equally well in all the STEM subjexts to put in all the school systems,” he said.
So if schools cannot find “really good physics teachers who are at the top of their game,” he said, then maybe several who are really good should teach virtual courses, allowing more students access to a physics class.
School Grades: As we’ve reported before, changes to the FCAT scoring system and to the school grading formula are expected to lower A-to-F grades across Florida this year.
Robinson said schools need to be braced for that. The number of F-schools could hit about 200 (up from 38 this year), he said, and the number of D’s could almost double from this year’s 143. And some A schools will find they’re just B’s this year.
“Students didn’t suddenly become illiterate or unable to do mathematical computations. It’s just because we raised the standards,” he said.
Raising standards is important and in past year’s schools have responded positively, after an initial dip in grades. And if it’s any comfort the 2012 grades aren’t expected to be as bad as they were in 1999, the first year school grades were issues.
“We’re going to ask people to be very resilient,” Robinson added.
Testing (and how much?): Robinson said he knows some people think Florida tests students too much — or has too much riding on FCAT . But he thinks the real problem is that the public (and students) doesn’t understand “why assessment matters.”
“Are we testing students too much, or we just don’t like the FCAT?” Robinson said. “If we got rid of FCAT what would we use? We’d have to have something because it’s not a guessing game. It’s an assessment game.”
Robinson added that good teachers — whose students show strong gains on FCAT — teach what students need to know without focusing so much on test prep.
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_education_edblog/2012/05/ed-commissioner-discusses-global-education-virtual-classes-school-grades-and-fcat-and-the-complaint-of-too-much-testing.html
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